Growing Up in New Guinea

In Growing Up in New Guinea, Mead recounts her study of the Manus, a New Guinea people still almost untouched by the outside world when she visited them in 1928.

Writers have been telling parents how to raise their children for centuries; however, the systematic observation of child development was then just beginning, and Mead was among the first to study it cross-culturally. Everywhere she went, she included women and children, who had been invisible to early researchers. Her study of the Manus continues to affect the way parents, teachers, and policy makers look at children.Within the space of a few years, Mead had studied growing up in two radically different societies. This comparison not only confirmed her own view of the importance of culture in childrearing but also stimulated her to think about patterns across cultures: Is there an integral connection between the treatment of young children and the personalities that they come to exhibit as adults? As Mead’s ideas became known in the United States and other countries, ordinary citizens as well as scholars acquired a new appreciation of the importance of childrearing practices and the diversity of coherent life patterns around the globe. We now take for granted what Mead first made clear to the world.Just as we return to the greatest works of art at various ages and derive new inspirations from them, so too, we can revisit important scientific treatises and wrestle with them anew. For raising many of the right questions, coming up with some acute answers, and rendering one compelling—-if partia—picture of an intriguing society, we continue to remain in the debt of Margaret Mead.As a cognitive neuroscientist, Howard Gardner brings an unique perspective to Growing Up in New Guinea. In the Introduction to the Perennial Classic edition he gracefully acknowledges the historical baggage Mead carried on her journey to New Guinea, and gently reminds current students to acknowledge influences that shape contemporary perspectives as well.